بدأ المشروع قبل قرن.

بدأ means began or started.

In this sentence it is the past tense, 3rd person masculine singular form:

• بدأ = he/it began

Because المشروع (the project) is masculine singular, Arabic uses this form.

A careful pronunciation is:

• badaʾa

The last sound is a hamza (ء), a glottal stop, so it is not just badaa.

Because Arabic often uses verb–subject order, especially in straightforward narrative sentences.

So:

• بدأ المشروع = The project began

This is a very normal Arabic pattern.

You could also say:

• المشروع بدأ قبل قرن

That is also grammatical, but starting with the verb is often the more neutral or standard choice in Modern Standard Arabic.

المشروع means the project.

It is made of:

• الـ = the
• مشروع = project

So:

• مشروع = a project
• المشروع = the project

In full formal pronunciation with case ending, it would be:

• المشروعُ (al-mashrūʿu)

It is pronounced roughly:

• al-mashrūʿ

A few useful notes:

• الـ is pronounced al- here because م is a moon letter, so the l sound stays.
• The last consonant is ع (ʿayn), which has no exact English equivalent.

In careful full reading with case ending:

• al-mashrūʿu

Literally, قبل قرن means:

• before a century

But in Arabic, قبل + a time period often corresponds to English ago.

So:

• قبل قرن = a century ago
• قبل سنة = a year ago
• قبل أسبوع = a week ago

This is a very common Arabic way to express elapsed time.

Because the meaning is a century, not the century.

So:

• قرن = a century / one century
• القرن = the century

In this sentence, the speaker is giving a length of time, not referring to a specific named century. That is why the indefinite form قرن is used.

Here قبل is a time expression meaning before.

In learner-friendly terms, you can think of it as functioning like a preposition or adverbial time word. It introduces the time phrase:

• قبل قرن = a century ago / before a century

In traditional grammar, قبل is treated as a noun of time in an iḍāfa-like construction, and the following noun is in the genitive.

In fully vocalized formal Arabic, it would be:

• قبلَ قرنٍ

So قرن is in the genitive:

• قرنٍ (qarnin)

You will often see case endings omitted in normal Arabic writing, so it is usually written simply:

• قرن

But if everything were fully marked, the phrase would be:

• قبلَ قرنٍ

With full case endings, it would be:

• بدأَ المشروعُ قبلَ قرنٍ
• badaʾa al-mashrūʿu qabla qarnin

In normal pause pronunciation, many speakers would say something closer to:

• بدأ المشروع قبل قرن
• badaʾ al-mashrūʿ qabl qarn

Both are connected to the same written sentence; the first is the full formal reading.

No. In this sentence, بدأ is being used intransitively:

• بدأ المشروع = The project began

So المشروع is the subject, not the object.

Arabic بدأ can also be used in ways that involve an object in other contexts, but here it simply means that the project itself started.

Yes. That is a very natural translation.

Possible English translations include:

• The project began a century ago.
• The project started a century ago.

Both are good. Began is a little more formal; started is a little more everyday.

You would replace قرن with the dual form:

• بدأ المشروع قبل قرنين
• The project began two centuries ago

Here:

• قرن = one century
• قرنان / قرنين = two centuries

After قبل, the form you would normally see is قرنين.